The present invention relates generally to the field of product marketing research, and more particularly to total unduplicated reach and frequency analysis.
Rating scales are common tools in marketing for measuring customer preferences for products, or features of products, that may influence a company or business owner's use or promotion of a product or feature. For example, a common analysis tool to determine the optimal product or feature for sale is total unduplicated reach and frequency analysis, or “TURF.” TURF is a type of analysis that determines possible combinations of products or records that are attractive to the largest number of potential customers. TURF is also commonly used in conjunction with rating scales for product line optimization. The most common metrics are the percentage of potential customers that desire at least one product in a bundle of a limited number of products, the “reach,” or the total number of occurrences that any product in the bundle is selected, or “frequency.” The TURF analysis also deals with combinations of reach and frequency in order to demonstrate and approximate a customer desire for a certain product or feature of a product. A user of TURF analysis may also alter the definitions of reach or frequency by specifying the desirability threshold. As the number of products or features, collectively “variables,” increases, the computational resources required to perform the TURF analysis increase as each new variable requires an analysis of all combinations with previous variables and the new variable. While TURF analysis of 10-20 variables may be reasonable, analysis of 50 or more variables becomes resource and cost prohibitive.